About this book

Introduction

Among the several dozens of symposia held on the occasion of the quincentennial of U ppsala University, there was included one symposium devoted to the theme of 'Philosophy and Grammar'. A selection of the most important papers delivered at this symposium have been collected in this volume. The papers need no introduction, but the inclusion of two of them in this collection requires a brief comment. First, the paper by von Wright, although not directly concerned with the central topic of the symposium, has been included because it was the terminating speech of the six parallel symposia (including the symposium on 'Philosophy and Grammar') held by the Humanities Faculty and moreover, because the raison d'etre of the Humanities is analyzed in this paper by a very prominent Swedish-speaking philosopher. Second, Professor Hintikka was unable to participate. In view of his expertise in the field, we nevertheless requested him to contribute a paper, so to speak, post factum. This he very generously did. We wish to express our sincere appreciation to all who participated and/or helped to carry the sessions through to a successful conclusion. We also wish to extend a special thanks to Professor Roman lakobson of Harvard University, who assumed the responsibility of General Chairman of the symposium.